Another buddy stopped by to see how we were doing
I upgraded to 1.75" DOM tube, and hot dog...the new tubework is MUCH lighter then the half of a tub that was left, and much lighter then the cage I had built out of 2" .120 wall DOM. Combine that with 4 guys and it goes on like nothing.
So once the chassis was on the frame, I started gutting the dash. My plan is to use the stock gauges and steering column. Something I've discovered while going through this is that Shaffer's has designed everything so exact that you could
easily use the cowl, firewall and even the dash without very much modification. I'll be making an aluminum dash and mounting the factory gauges under a slot cut in the dash.
There is A LOT of room in this thing too. The tubework is as wide as the tub, so you've got about 56" of space in between the outer tubes. I could almost fit a third seat in the front. OK maybe a teen seat.
Today I cut out the firewall and cowl and trimmed it to fit. Very minor trimming. I'll probably be picking up another cowl since this one has seen the rocks before. I'm still undecided on building a firewall or just using what I've got now. There are positives and negatives to each, but just using the stock piece is so easy I may go with that.
The hood needs to be trimmed to close all the way, about 2", or the grill needs to be raise, or the tubework dropped a little. It seems to sit pretty tall right now so I may do that. I've got some figuring to do in the next couple of days so I probably won't have much in the way of updates until later this week. Want to make sure I go the right route the first time.
Looking forward to starting work on the 4 link also. I'll be using 2.5" Johnny Joints, fixed on the axle end, and 1.25" shank on the frame end. I might be doing same length uppers and lowers, can you say beef?